h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Bran,
Forvie was great - went there twice. It's too big to get round in day's outing. Well it is if you take enormous picnics and spend ages just sitting watching what's going on. I must add an update to that entry on Forvie. This year the Scottish Nature Trust were able to purchase two thirds of it. It was on lease before, this is much better for its long term future, so that was really good news. Also, they've found iron age hut circles and middens. Found and lost perhaps. I knew about them for this visit but couldn't see where to find them. They were revealed when the sands shifted. The sands have shifted again! It's amazing how the look of the place changes where the really big, unstabilised, dunes are. A big storm there must be quite a sight.

A highlight was watching an Osprey fishing. Do you get them in Tas? Probably not. It was too late in the year for eider ducklings, and the weather was so fine that most of the terns were out at sea. Saw a few though. I think they must be top of list for flying skill.

I remember you talking about the Overland Track. It sounds much 'bigger' than anything you might get in the UK. But, saying that, I've never been into the Scottish Highlands, only around them. I can imagine a little how the mountains might have looked though as, very occasionally, there's been snow on the mountains in Spain when we've been. They're spectacular. Seeing snow on the Pyrenees wasn't the same. There wasn't the contrast because it was early in the year and nothing else was very green yet. And the sky was mostly cloudy! That makes a difference.

Three weeks no rain IS a drought! They were talking of hosepipe bans in Aberdeen. Apparently the River Dee was too low for the salmon to leap upstream. And three days sunshine, at over 70F is a heatwave. (Did you hear they had slow all the trains down because the tracks got too hot!!!) It's also a summer. Can't believe how the nights are drawing in already. Half past eight on a cloudy day and it's too dark to go round the garden.

My sparrows look as if they're trying to learn to swim. I have a bucket outside the backdoor to catch the drips from an overflow pipe, up under the eaves (I need to renew a washer in the cistern). It was full yesterday. The sparrows were landing on the edge and flying/jumping across it so low that their undercarriages got wet. They also caught the drips on their backs. Then they'd fly off to the trees and fluff their feathers out. I think it was their way of taking a bath in water too deep to land in.

At least it distracted them from my runner beans.

The birds love the dripping overflow. They obviously prefer running water to the birdbath. I've half a mind to buy one of those solar powered water features and attach it too the wall but they seem a bit of a gimmic. I have to stop the drip though. I had one last winter (different pipe) - the icicle display was spectacular but not good for the house.

Hope that conference goes well. Wall to wall history indeed!

PS, did all that nonsense about 'discovering' the Romans wore socks with their sandals reach you over there? Anyone would think they'd assumed the Romans ran around in their stocking soles.

sending wishes for a good Christmas and a good 2004, Bran, Walter, and Sal.

Willem, you're still subscribed to this thread so I'll say happy Christmas and best wishes for 2004 (now as an uncle ) to you here as well.

I really enjoyed the conversations we all used to have. It's what got me hooked to h2g2, cheers to all of you .
Waz

Hey Waz

A very happy New Year!!! Well ... I have to say that I am now fully entrenched as the worst correspondant on the Guide!

What a year it has been. The PhD is now completely finished and I have graduated ... so it is Dr Bran (or should that be Dr The Explorer?). It all happened rather quickly in the end ... markers replied in what I consider to be rapid time given the length of The Tome (145,000 words). So, all is well. Thanks again for your help ... much appreciated, I can tell you.

I am coming over to Britain around Easter to go to a conference in Manchester on "Britons in Anglo-Saxon England". I hope to get to Oxford as well to meet some of the people whoes work I have been reading for all this time.

I am off for another walk in February, this time to a spot called Mt Anne. This is in the world heritage area in south-west Tassie (we have about 30% of the island as world heritage or national park). Should be about 3 nights ... a bit of pack-hauling required I am told. I am also rather unfit at the moment, so will have to pray that I can get to the point where I won't die on the first day and hope that this will get my fitness up for the second day and so on. I have found this to be the case on long walks ... you find you actually get better as the days go on, which is a little counter-intuitive but still.

We have had some rather hot weather here for the last two weeks, but have returned to form yesterday when the weather was predicted to be light snow on the higher peaks (and here it is the middle of summer).

I hope that things are chugging along well for you over there. Please excuse my shocking absences from the thread ... I always look forward to your posts as they are so well written and great to read.

Take care

Bran

Hey Bran , great to hear from you!

If 'The' was a middle name it could Dr Explorer, which sounds quite good. Yes, I can hear you being introduced like that. On the other hand if Bran the Explorer is like the Welsh 'Jones the Milk', then it's Dr Bran. Anyway. Congratulations , I'm really glad to hear you were sucessful, not that I thought there was any doubt. The markers couldn't have had any doubts either, to be so quick.

Coming over to Britain - that's cool. Did you know your clan gathering on Barra got postponed to 2004? "Tentatively scheduled" for August according to this http://www.isleofbarra.com/Clan%20MacNeil2.htm. It's a bit of stretch from Easter to August I suppose.

I thought I was going to be able to go to Barra this summer, but the dates arranged clash with meetings I can't avoid at work - can't put into words how disappointing that is. It's four years at least since I've been there. Other than that, and some upheavals workwise, I'm fine and life is chugging along well enough. The work changes will take time to sort out, but they will eventually. I just have to put up with their having halved the accounting resources without apparently even realising they were doing it. They being the Directors/Trustees. Who are unpaid and volunteers and I shouldn't really get so annoyed by them...

Your walk sounds wonderful. I chickened out of our usual New Year walk, just a stroll by your standards, because the weather was terrible. Middle of winter here of course, so we too have snow on the hills. Well we did last week, there was some on the Welsh and Shropshire hills which I see driving to work. Took my mother shopping at the local garden centre sales instead! Dreadful, I know.

Great to hear from you, whatever the timescale. I grin like the old Cheshire cat when I see a new post on this thread. Take care, and if you're back before Easter, tell me more about this trip to this side of the world.
Waz